


Non dedecore aliquid, sed dedecus appetens

by fortunehasgivenup



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, POV Rio (Good Girls), Sexual Content, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 18:41:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18816760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunehasgivenup/pseuds/fortunehasgivenup
Summary: Rio finds himself collecting little pieces of Elizabeth, trying to make sense of the whole.





	Non dedecore aliquid, sed dedecus appetens

Rio knows what he likes.

He’s old enough now that someone being hot enough to make his dick interested isn’t enough to make the rest of him care. He turns women down. Politely, but he turns them down. His teenage self would be horrified, but Rio has learned the value of quality over quantity. 

So when Elizabeth Boland and the rest of her three woman wrecking crew smash into his life, there’s no reason to feel wary. None of them are his type - married suburban ladies who lunch just looking for thrills and Rio outgrew the desire to be the forbidden fruit in that little drama years ago. Plus, they stole his money. That has a tendency to sour things, even when they start off good. Him and Elizabeth? Did not start out good.

Rio’s mature enough that his first instinct to being challenged isn’t to lash out anymore and intimidating enough that most don’t bother trying. When they do, he looks at them, really looks at them until they decided that maybe he’s right after all.

Elizabeth doesn’t do that. She insults him, belittles him, plays like she’s better because she lives in a house she can’t even actually afford. He gives her the look that has sent grown men scrambling to make things right, given him an extra 5% here, 10% there. A lot of people don’t realize that the best way to win a fight is to not get in one. Rio avoids fights and he’s good at it. Elizabeth longs for one, longs for something to make her feel enough to fight for. And Rio? Rio gives it to her because he wants to see what’ll happen. She’s got him curious in a way he hasn’t felt in a while.

She gives him her pearls, wrapped around a nail in the warehouse like a wreath. Connie calls during her last walkthrough to ask what they’re about. Rio tells her to leave them where they are and gets out of bed to drive to the warehouse. It’s the same necklace she’d been wearing when they dropped off the fresh cash. When he removes them from their little display, he likes to imagine that he can still feel the warmth of her skin, just as pale as the pearls themselves. He runs his fingers over them, counting without really even thinking about it. He used to sit in church next to his mother, playing with the cheap plastic beads of her rosary as the priest droned on about sin and forgiveness. He didn’t take to church much, though he still goes on the special occasions to make her happy. Rio gave up trying to pray for forgiveness a long time ago, so what’s another sin or two to add to his tally?

Sitting in his kitchen after he visits Elizabeth, Rio toys with the pearls, sliding them through his fingers and wrapping them around his palm. She has a delicate neck. If Rio was an ancient poet, he’d compare her to a swan. The thought makes him smile, but he sobers at the memory of what happened in those stories when people gave into temptation, when they strayed from the comfort of their lives. He’d rather not tempt fate, so he shuts the pearls away in a drawer and tries to forget about them.

They stay shut away until Gretchen’s dropping him off at his place with the stern reminder that he’s out on bail and probably under surveillance. He knows, he just knows it was her that left shit for the feds to find. He storms into his apartment and opens the drawer where he’d dropped her necklace, lifts it out on a single finger.

He’s pissed, beyond pissed in fact. The last time that someone had come at him like this, Rio had retaliated quickly and decisively. The stories that came out of that have been a deterrent to most who would try to bring him down. He supposes Elizabeth never heard those stories. But even if she had, she might have still done it. He rolls the pearls between his hands and contemplates how best to take what he’s owed. Legal fees. Time. Potentially freedom. 

None of those diminish the weird feeling of satisfaction. He’d known Elizabeth from the start, seen the vicious little thing underneath the layers of her she shows the world. But, he closes his hand around the necklace and shoves it in his pocket, she needs to learn how to fight. Needs to learn how and when to strike. She’s unrefined, a trapped wildcat lashing out at whatever comes at her, never noticing the threats just out of sight. Single minded focus on whatever’s closest, without a thought of what to do once that’s taken care of. 

Rio takes Elizabeth’s pearls with him when he goes to that big house that brought her into his world in the first place. He’s got them in his pocket when he beats up her husband, then ties his hands behind his back and shoves him into a dining room chair to wait for Elizabeth’s return. They’re there as he takes out his gun, slides it to her and delivers his first lesson. 

She listens, but he’s not entirely sure she’s getting it.

“It’s okay,” he tells her, soft in a way he isn’t with people outside of his family. “You did your best,” he comforts her, feeling that pride all over again. She’s so close to being free, so close to being exactly who she is, but she keeps pulling back at the last second. It frustrates him.

If he was feeling unkind, he’d call her a tease. Instead, he shoots her husband and heads home with the scent of her perfume lingering in his nostrils. There had been curiosity under the fear in her eyes when she’d lifted the gun, a spark of want when he’d skimmed a single finger down her cheek. He wants to nurture that curiosity, encourage her desire.

When he wraps his right hand around himself in the shower, he’s still got her fucking necklace twined around his fingers of his left as they prop him up against the tiles. He thinks about Elizabeth wearing nothing but the pearls, in his bed, moaning. She’d probably start off all soft and sweet, just like she does with everything, then grow more vicious. She’d scratch him up, probably roll him to his back and ride him. And he’d let her, he’d just lie back and enjoy it. Then, when she was tired out, he’d pull his cock from her and do exactly what he’s doing now until he comes on her chest. On those fucking tits. The joke is so painfully obvious that he refuses to make it.

When he comes, she’s not there, so it splashes onto the tiles of his shower. He shakes for a moment, coming down from the high, then washes off.

He’s going to teach her, lead her past the mistakes that he made in his rise to the top, Rio decides. He’s never really felt like having a protégé, not in this line of work. But Elizabeth flips a lot of his assumptions about himself on their head. Maybe it’s exactly what his life needed - something to shake him to his core.

The pearls aren’t in his pocket the night that she shows up at the bar, husband in tow. But she meets his eyes over the guy’s shoulder and Rio knows exactly what she wants. He tosses back his drink and follows her into the bathroom. He watches her walk towards him and when she lifts her hand to lock the door, he catches the scent of her sweat mixed with perfume and deodorant. He keeps watching as she turns and goes to the sink, meaning to let her put on a show for him. 

The sight of her raising her skirt and hooking a finger in her panties makes him rethink that. Why watch when you can touch? The bathroom’s small. It’s not even two steps to get to her and when he makes contact with her back, he’s already got a hand pulling her panties down. He cups her breast through her dress, wishing that he had time to take it off - all of it. Maybe he’d let her keep the shoes though, if she asked him nicely. 

He strokes his fingers up and down the seam of her cunt, breath hitching as he feels how wet she is. She must have soaked her panties if she was sitting there like this, must have been squirming in her seat. Needing this. Needing - he hesitates. He was there, but was it him that she had needed? If he hadn’t been at the bar, would she still be here, another man stroking her? The thought makes him bite at her neck, just barely beneath the collar as he tilts her hips where he needs them and pushes in all at once.

She gasps, gripping the bathroom counter tighter. When he raises his eyes to look at the two of them in the mirror, she’s got her eyes closed, mouth slack with pleasure. His hands on her hips tighten just a little more. He wants her to look at him.

When he steps back, cock slipping out of her, Beth moans and reaches back for him. Rio moves her so she’s got her back to the wall, reaches down and just lifts her. It’s the kind of ridiculous thing you see in porn that always seems so goddamn ill conceived, but he’s pushing back into her so he doesn’t particularly give a fuck. She squeezes around him, so he holds her tighter. He makes her come first with just a couple circles of his thumb and when she breathes a name - his name - into the air, it’s game over for him too. 

Rio’s tempted to take her panties with him, to add to that little pile of things - the pearls, his arrest - that Elizabeth has given him. But he knows that no matter how well she’s able to clean herself up in this bathroom, she won’t be able to get all of him off. As she slides them back up her legs, his mind is already providing him with the image of what they’ll look like when she goes to take them off later. She should have something to remember him by too, shouldn’t she?

Not that he has any intention of letting her forget what he can do for her. He hasn’t even scratched the surface. It’s not just the sex, though he can give her that, and now she knows it. He draws attention to his mouth the next time they’re together, rubbing his bottom lip, and when she swallows, he can guess what she’s thinking about. Good. She should be. He is.

It’s so much more than that though. Rio can teach her how to stop holding herself back, how to fight to win. He watches her and he wants her to stop making excuses to cover up the fact that she enjoys this. She might be a mother but she’s a drug dealer and criminal now too. Can’t have two feet in both worlds, doesn’t work like that. You either straddle the line or you pick one. Elizabeth is too busy trying to do the impossible that she ignores what is possible.

Like he tells her, it’s lonely at the top. Maybe it doesn’t have to be, if you get the right person. He doesn’t say that part, but when she says his cut is at her place he thinks that she might get it. Some part of him needs her to be the one to bridge the gap, to get this started.

It’s slower this time - they’ve got hours to explore and Rio intends on using every single second. He learns all kind of things about Elizabeth. She’s an enthusiastic kisser. She gets super self conscious when he lowers his head between her thighs but when he gets her off with his tongue and lips and fingers, she actually cries. There’s a birthmark on her back - big and kind of splotchy. She tells him she never wore bikinis or backless dresses because of it, even before her chest made going braless inadvisable. There’s a small tattoo of a bird on her hip that makes her cover her face and groan. Apparently Ruby’s got the same one. Her hands are so soft that it’s easy to forget what they can do to him.

When she tells him it’s over, he isn’t surprised, not really. Why should she be different from other women like her, looking to spend time with someone dangerous and new. But it doesn’t lessen his anger. He puts his clothes on and catches sight of a family photo - her, Dean, the kids. They’re all smiling, but it’s posed and stiff. They’re all wearing coordinating colours. Rio picks it up, covers Dean’s face with his thumb, contemplates breaking it. Maybe that would help Elizabeth remember who her husband was and what he’s done to her, what he doesn’t do to her. He puts the photo back, but plucks the cap from her perfume bottle and takes it with him, just to be an asshole. 

Doesn’t hurt that it smells like her. When he gets home, he drops it in the drawer of his bedside table with his watches, where Marcus knows not to go, and wonders if there will be a time when he doesn’t feel as though he’s picking up after Elizabeth, hoarding the breadcrumbs that she leaves for him. If there will be a day when she gives without strings attached. He slides the drawer shut and he wonders.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Augustine’s Confessions, 2.9: Not seeking anything by shameful means, but shame itself.
> 
> Unbeta’ed, so I apologize for any mistakes. If you see one, let me know. Same goes for suggesting appropriate tags.
> 
> I never post anything, so this is a first. But I think this is also the first time that a ship I follow is actually happening on screen. Feels appropriate, I guess? I wrote 99% of this right before 2x10 aired, but kept tinkering with it.


End file.
